"Mali, stop it," I snap, trying to ground her, but the fear is infectious.
She isn't listening. She’s staring at a man who just entered the café. He’s not coming toward us; he’s stopped at the counter,calmly ordering a coffee, but his eyes are fixed on the reflection in the pastry case. He’s watching our booth.
"He's here," Madeline breathes, her gaze darting to every person in the shop.
"Every shadow, every flicker of a camera... It's him. He’s in my head, Lucy. He’s claiming me, and now he’s going to claim you because he thinks you’re just a weakness he can use to break me. He doesn't even know he's stalking his own flesh and blood."
She leans in so close I can feel the frantic heat of her breath.
"We have to go. Now. But we can't go to your place, and we can't go to mine. If he catches us together after Sterling's revelation, he'll know something shifted. We have to act like we're still just two terrified women who know nothing."
I look at the man at the counter. He’s taking his cup, his movements slow and agonizingly deliberate. He starts to turn.
It’s him. It’s the man I met at the morgue.
"Too late," I mutter, my hand sliding toward the heavy ceramic mug on the table.
"He’s coming over."
The air in the booth feels thin, like I’m breathing in glass. He’s here. The Arbiter. My brother. His presence is crushing the light out of the café. I don’t even know his real name yet. Madeline didn’t want to tell me. But I suppose I’ll find out.
He isn’t wearing any mask. He doesn’t care that everyone sees his face. The mask he wears now is made of his own fractured psyche.
He looks different from the night at the morgue. Tattered, his eyes wide, vibrating with a frantic energy that tells me he hasn’t slept in days. He’s leaning into his own madness, and it’s terrifying to watch.
He slides into the bench right next to me, forcing me to squeeze against the cold windowpane.
"Deimos," Madeline whispers. Her voice is a brittle wreck, but I feel her foot kick me sharply under the table. It’s a warning: Don’t say a word about Charles. Don't let him know.
He ignores her, his gaze locked on me. It's clinical, the way a predator sizes up an animal before the kill.
"So," he murmurs, his voice a low, raspy vibration.
"This is the famous Lucy. The anchor. The reason my Doctor keeps trying to drift away from me."
I grip my coffee mug so hard I’m afraid the ceramic will snap in my palm.
"Get out of our booth," I hiss, my eyes burning into his.
He tilts his head, a slow, unnatural, bird-like movement.
"Such a spirit for someone so... fragile. Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to keep your world from shattering, Lucy? Madeline does. She knows the price of your safety."
Madeline lunges forward, her voice a desperate, hushed snarl that sounds entirely out of character for her.
"Are you insane? What are you doing here? You just cleared out a Detective, Deimos! You’re going to get me arrested. Bryan is gone, detectives are already breathing down my neck, and now you’re sitting in a public café where anyone could see us!"
She gestures wildly at the window.
"No one knows what The Arbiter looks like, but if they see me, the lead pathologist, consorting with a man who looks like he just crawled out of a nightmare, I’m done! You’re destroying the only life I have left!"
Deimos turns his gaze to her, and the madness in his eyes is blindingly bright. He reaches out, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw with a touch so agonizingly light it feels like a threat.
"The life you had is dead, Madeline. I buried it with Bryan," he says, his smile widening into something jagged and wrong.
"And as for the police... they see only what I allow them to see. Sterling left because I gave him a bigger fire to put out. You should be thanking me."
Then, he turns back to me. His eyes narrow, searching my face. I feel like I’m being dissected while I’m still breathing.
